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For more than 10 years, I worked as an executive in the fast food industry, and during my tenure, I believed that increasing the hourly wages of frontline employees would lead to lower profits. I now know I was wrong. According to Zeynep Ton, a professor of operations management at MIT, companies can provide good, well-paying jobs and drive profits at the same time. Choosing one over the other is, according to Ton, an “unnecessary sacrifice.” During a recent conversation...[to read more click here]

It’s just another day in leadership paradise. An important project is languishing—like a bad houseguest, it’s going nowhere, but no one is calling it out. As the head of your team, do you take the matter into your own hands and get the job done, or continue to slough it off on an unfortunate subordinate? To read more, click here.

Matt (not his real name) is a classic taker. His office walls are a veritable ego-museum, laden with awards and photos depicting his many talents and cozy relationships with high-profile celebrities. Conversations and emails are peppered with personal pronouns, causing speculation about whether he earns a commission each time he uses one. In bad times, he asks for help, but in good times, he offers none. To read more, click here.

You have to admire a leader with the courage to say to his team, “Chances are I’m going to get fired and, if so, I want to get fired for doing the right thing.” This is the philosophy of Wayne Shurts, executive vice president and chief technology officer of Sysco. With more than 18 years of experience in top-level positions in IT, e-business, supply chain management, sales operations, and logistics, Shurts has never been fired—and he probably never will be. In my experience, leaders with the courage to do what’s right, without fearing possible repercussions, rarely are. To read more, click here.

This blog post is in honor of two women who have dedicated their lives to helping children transform into young adults. In particular, they made a profound impact on the life of a 13-year-old girl named Sarah, who shares her story. To read more, click here.

Think back. Reflect on your career and write down your five biggest leadership disappointments.

If your experience is typical, your list will include losing top-quality talent. The memory of “suddenly” losing one of your best and brightest never seems to fade. The story is always the same: They weren’t looking, but a great opportunity just fell into their lap.

Here’s the ultimate leadership litmus test: Would your employees still work for you if you didn’t pay them?

To answer this question, I traveled to Saddleback Church, a so-called mega church that wouldn’t be able to fulfill its mission without volunteers. On a typical Sunday at its main campus in Lake Forest, Calif. (where I visited), more than 1,000 volunteers are needed to make sure that the 20,000 attendees are welcomed, parked, fed, inspired, and connected. To read more, click here.

Truth be told, I’m a bit of a cynic when it comes to books about leadership—most of them lack the substance to justify their 200-plus pages. But there’s a new leadership book on the market entitled Joy, Inc.: How We Built a Workplace People Love (Portfolio, 2013), which has changed my mind a little. I found Joy, Inc. (and a subsequent interview with the author, Richard Sheridan) thought provoking, and, surprisingly, it left me wanting more. To read more, click here.

Meet Dave. To his bosses, he’s an experienced executive who gets results with the company’s best interests in mind. But to many other people who work with and for him, Dave is a downer.

Dave likes to give lots of unsolicited advice. His need to be the smartest guy in the room means he makes decisions to which he (but nobody else) is committed. His poor listening skills prevent him from tapping into the gifts, passions, and abilities of others. His proclivity to find fault breaks down spirits and relationships, as survival instincts cause people to turn inward and stop working as a team.To read more, click here.

Think back. Reflect on your career and write down your top five leadership disappointments.

If your experience is typical, your list will include losing top-quality talent. The memory of “suddenly” losing one of your best and brightest never seems to fade. The story is always the same: They weren’t looking, but a great opportunity just fell into their lap (yeah, right).

There’s no question that staying competitive requires change, and that change creates winners and losers. Every day, leaders make decisions that affect people’s lives. The challenge is to make them with heart, as if your children are watching.

Employment isn’t what it used to be and it’s not what it should be. Reid Hoffman said it right, “You can’t have an agile company if you give employees lifetime contracts—and the best people don’t want one employer for life anyway. But you can build a better compact than ‘every man for himself.’”

What’s love got to do with consulting? Typically, not much—it’s usually a marriage of convenience where the qualified become even more qualified. The successful grow even more so. But there is a new consulting love story unfolding where the unqualified get qualified. And those for whom professional success seemed once out of reach find rewarding and robust careers.

Have you heard the latest? The CFO is the new CIO. In some companies, CFOs are assuming responsibility for IT. These companies have decided that IT development and delivery can be decentralized across the various business units and functions. The CFO, they believe, can provide the necessary central coordination to ensure that IT-enabled investments generate value and that IT is operating in a cost-effective, high quality, and secure manner.

The end state promises computing resources that deliver against the New Normal's need for speed, collaboration, productivity, and scale.

The transition state, however, delivers nothing but challenges for all involved.

On the vendor side, big names don't necessarily equate to big capabilities. Every "world class" cloud vendor consists of mere mortal employees who are struggling (given organizational silos, fragmented technology, and dramatic growth) to deliver on their company's service level commitments . Buyers beware. Take your reference checks to a new level - and focus not only on vendor capabilities but also the internal capabilities necessary to make sure the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

As we transition from managing assets to services, what is the role for our MVP technologists? With the transition to cloud, they are being asked to transfer their knowledge and manage service levels without direct access to the tools that allow them to do so. As an technical IT leader said to me recently, "We are now managing relationships and tickets - not technology."

Don't write off these employees as "unnecessary" in the end state and replaceable in the transition. Companies need to "lift and shift" their MVP technologists from the micro to the macro: architecting, integrating, innovating, directing, monitoring, resolving, negotiating.

As you move to cloud computing, how are you making sure that your people are moving with you?

Question: Why would a major technology vendor fire people for leveraging IT?

Answer: When the employees are leveraging IT without involving IT.

A well-known technology company has become the poster child for locking down IT to capture efficiencies gained through consolidation and standardization. Now, all IT decisions must be funneled through IT. It's a good idea that has gone bad. It's not unusual for engineers to wait a year for technology decisions. Going it alone risks termination. Courageous business leaders mask IT spending in their project budgets by calling it "equipment."

IT is at a crossroads - it needs to either figure out how to bring shadow IT out of the dark - and into the light - or risk being marginalized as increasingly tech-friendly business leaders take innovation into their own hands.

It's time for IT to control what matters. Imagine if IT defined investment policies rather than stewarding all business cases through approval? Imagine if IT certified project managers rather than managing all IT-enabled projects? Imagine if IT approved vendors rather than getting involved with all IT vendor provisioning? Imagine if IT controlled access to applications and data rather than the access devices?

Shadow IT reflects a need. Rather than shutting it down, IT should be building it up - while ensuring that it meets the needs of the enterprise as well as the individuals within.

Here's a simple piece of advice for companies looking to become more innovative: Get IT out of the IT department.

I know it sounds counterintuitive and goes against the drive for centralization that has been in effect at most companies for the past 10 years. But for both competitive and technological reasons, funneling everything through the IT department no longer makes sense. Instead, business-unit leaders need to start assuming more control over the IT assets that fuel their individual businesses. To read the full Wall Street Journal article, click here. To learn more, listen to a recent NPR interview with Susan.

This week I met with some senior IT leaders to discuss my new book and the future of IT. At the end of the discussion, one of the participants expressed concern about the ability to develop future IT leaders in light of the fact that the company is outsourcing and "we aren't hiring junior IT people anymore." As I looked around the table, I realized that this organization is running on the leaders they developed five, 10, even 15 years ago, in their pre-outsourcing days. These people are getting older and looking tired. Outsourcers, not employees, are performing many of the jobs that helped build their leadership skills.

Andy Grove penned a fascinating commentary about the impact of outsourcing on American job creation, and the subsequent ability to innovate in the sectors that have been outsourced. He challenges the belief that as long as knowledge work stays in the United States, it doesn't matter what happens to factory jobs. Grove believes that, "not only did we lose an untold number of jobs, we broke the chain of experience that is important for technological evolution." Grove makes a good argument that, over time, companies lose the ability to innovate in the sectors they outsource.